In
Nigeria, telecom operators (e.g. MTN, Glo, Airtel, Etisalat etc) offer various
value added services such as ring tones, caller tunes, internet radio etc to
their subscribers. To access these services, subscribers are able to download their
preferred artiste’s song (as a caller tune) by paying a monthly fee (currently N50).
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| Caller Ring Back Tones |
As
copyright in these songs are owned by the respective artistes/recording
company, the telecom operators will require authorisation from the copyright
owner(s) before they can legally make the songs available for their subscribers’
use.
However,
these telecom operators do not deal directly with the copyright owners. Rather,
“content distribution companies” approach the copyright owner(s) and obtain
license to distribute the relevant song(s) to the telecom operators. Under this
arrangement, the telecom operators provide the distribution companies with
distribution reports and also share the monthly download fee with them based on
the agreed percentage (usually fixed by the telecom operators).
The
content distributors then “work” on prepare new distribution reports and send same to
the copyright owner along with the owner’s share of the payment received by the
distributors (after deducting “advertising” costs, Value Added Tax etc.).
In
these circumstances, copyright owners have always asked: How do I ascertain the
accuracy of these distribution reports when I am not privy to the report
received directly from the telecom operators? How am I sure that the distributor
did not receive more than it has declared?
In
this Leo’s experience, the Content Distribution Agreements are always the same;
the distribution reports never arrive at the stated time; the (royalty)
payments are never received at a stated time and when payment is finally made,
the amount received after the above-stated deductions, is usually laughable.
In
view of the foregoing, this Leo is yet to decipher what advantage the current
arrangement serves for the copyright owners. Given the huge number of
subscribers using these caller tunes and the number of “content distribution
companies” springing up on a daily basis, it is suggested that the time and
circumstances are both right for copyright owners to insist on dealing directly
with the telecom operators or at least having a tripartite (3-party) arrangement
where the copyright owners receive the same report from the telecoms operators as
the distributors.
